The Daily Signal - Infrastructure or Democratic Wish List? What to Know About Those $1.1 Trillion and $3.5 Trillion Spending Bills

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

Congress is forging ahead with a $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill. The measure has received bipartisan support, but many conservatives warn that now is not the time to put America in even more debt.�� The government has increased America’s national debt by $5.2 trillion just since the start of 2020, but “adding to that with two more multitrillion-dollar spending packages over and above what they've already spent, that threatens to return us to the kind of inflation that we haven't seen in decades,” says David Ditch, a policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for the Federal Budget.  In addition to the $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill, Democrats are also striving to pass a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, which includes funding for universal day care, tuition-free community college, and climate change initiatives, among many other things. “It's important to understand the $3.5 trillion package … would be the largest piece of legislation in the history of the world,” Ditch says.  Ditch joins "The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain what’s in each bill and the effect such aggressive spending will have on the American people.  We also cover these stories:  Senate Democrats announce a $3.5 trillion budget they hope to pass through reconciliation, an obscure maneuver that would allow them to get it through the Senate with just 51 votes, sidestepping Republican opposition. One of the women who say New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually assaulted them comes forward to tell her story to the public in detail. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases a new report full of dire predictions. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, August 10th. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Virginia Allen. Congress is moving ahead with a $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill, a bill that will add substantially to America's rapidly growing national debt. On today's show, I talk with Heritage Foundation Federal Budget Policy analyst David Ditch about what is specifically included in the $1.1 trillion bill and what its passage could mean for our economy. We also discuss Democrats' $3.5 trillion reconciliation package and why so many on the left say both bills must pass. And don't forget, if you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. And please encourage others to subscribe.

And now on to today's top news. Senate Democrats announced Monday a $3.5 trillion budget that they hope to pass through reconciliation, an obscure Senate maneuver. that would allow them to pass it through the Senate with just 51 votes. So what's in the package? I'm going to read some passages from the statement issued by Senator Bernie Sanders, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee. He says, We will address the crisis in child care by making sure that no working family

pays more than 7% of their income on this basic need. We will provide universal pre-kindergarten to every 3- and 4-year-old. We will begin to address the crisis in higher education by making community colleges in America tuition-free. Through a civilian climate core, we will give hundreds of thousands of young people good-paying jobs and educational benefits as they help us combat climate change. We will bring undocumented people out of the shadows and provide them with a pathway to citizenship. And how will all this be paid for? Well, Sanders says we will finally ask the very wealthy and largest corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. One of the women who says New York Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually assaulted her has come forward to tell her story to the public in detail.

The governor's former executive assistant, Brittany Commissau, says Cuomo groped her twice the first time in December 2019 at the governor's mansion. She explained the interaction during an exclusive interview with CBS this morning that aired earlier this week. We're going to play a clip from that interview, but the following content may not be appropriate for children. So go ahead and skip forward about 40 seconds if you're listening with kids. I had to go over to the mansion to help the governor with a state of the state speech. I wasn't there late. I did my final edit. And while I was upstairs in the office, the governor said,

why don't me take a selfie? So his suggestion, you say. With your phone? With my phone. I then felt while taking the selfie, his hand go down my back onto my butt, and he started rubbing it. The second instance took place in November of 2020. Camiso says the governor again touched her inappropriately. Camisso filed a criminal complaint against Cuomo last week on Saturday.

day, Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said his office will launch a criminal investigation into Camisto's complaint, which could result in one or multiple misdemeanor charges against Cuomo. Camisso told CBS News that one of the reasons she made the decision to come forward and tell her story publicly is because of her daughter. Camisso said of her daughter, I never want her to be afraid to speak. I never want her to be afraid of any person in power, a man or a one. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a new report out and it's full of dire predictions. A summary of the report says climate change is irreversible and that humans have contributed to global warming.

The summary also states, global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered. Global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius and 2 degrees Celsius will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades. Many changes in the climate system become larger and direct relation to increasing global warming. They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heat waves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological, droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones as well as reductions in Arctic Sea Ice, Snow Cover, and Permafrost. But Steve Malloy, founder of junk science.com,

pointed out in a series of tweets that plenty of climate change predictions haven't happened. Malloy noted, 1987, James Hansen predicts global temp 3 to 4 degrees Celsius higher by 2020. 2020, global temps only 0.44 degrees Celsius higher. And 2008, Mount Kilimanjaro snow to vanish by 2020. 2020, only thing melted is the prediction. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Heritage Foundation budget expert David Ditch, as we break down what you need to know about the government's $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.

Are you looking for an easy and entertaining way to keep up with the news you care about? The Daily Signal and Heritage Foundation YouTube channels offer interviews with policy experts on the most critical issues and debates America is facing today, as well as short explainer videos that break down complex issues and documentaries that dive deep into the way its policy actually impacts people. Go ahead and subscribe to both the Daily Signal and Heritage Foundation YouTube channels today. You can search for either on your YouTube app or visit YouTube.com slash Heritage Foundation and YouTube.com slash Daily Signal. Congress is in the middle of debates over two large spending packages. Here with me to break down what you need to know about these

massive spending bills is David Ditch, a policy analyst in the Heritage Foundation's Center for the federal budget. David, thanks so much for being here. Happy to be here. So, David and I, I do want to let all of our listeners know that we are recording this interview on Monday afternoon. So by the time that you're hearing this conversation, it's possible that the Senate will have already voted early, early Tuesday morning to pass the $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill. But with that said, let's go ahead now and jump into the details of this trillion dollar infrastructure bill. So, David, the $1.1 trillion bill includes $550 billion for additional infrastructure building, like improving roads and bridges, public transportation, clean water, high-speed internet, and so on. So how much in this bill, how much money is allotted for things that are other than what we think of as infrastructure? It's really hard to say.

So it's important to provide the context here. Back in the spring, the Biden administration released a $2 trillion spending plan that they referred to as infrastructure. Most of that was not infrastructure, I think, by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. A lot of it was social spending. Some of it was economic micromanagement, had nothing to do with physical assets. This bill is actually focused on physical assets, strongly focused on physical assets. That doesn't make it a good thing, however. And why not?

So for one thing, they get the priorities completely wrong. So for example, there's a reason why infrastructure, broadly speaking, is a polls very well. It tends to pass by big majorities in Congress, and that's because historically the federal infrastructure spending, focuses on the highway system, which a huge number of Americans use for personal use. It's the nation's essentially circulatory system from moving people and goods from border to border and coast to coast. It's tremendously valuable. This bill would spend as much of the new money on things like Amtrak and public transportation as it does on the highway system, even though Amtrak and public transportation combined for 5% or less of transportation use, depending on what metrics you're looking at, in terms of mileage is less than 1%.

So then why this massive push to spend all of this money on infrastructure right now, especially infrastructure that, you know, like you point out, isn't even in that high demand among the American people? It seems to be political. And unfortunately, there seems to be a sense that, well, Republicans prioritize highway spending and Democrats prioritize transit spending. And rather than try to actually weigh what the value of different spending is, they're just going to throw one pot of money at the quote unquote Republican infrastructure that people actually use. And the same pot of, of money at the quote unquote Democrat infrastructure that very few people use, which is a really great way to light taxpayer money on fire. So then how much in this bill is actually necessary? I mean, how much should we be giving the government right now to spend on infrastructure? The fact is, I don't think the federal government should be increasing its infrastructure, spending, if anything, I think the federal government should be taking a step back. For one thing, the pandemic is absolutely a sea change moment in terms of how people travel. We don't know

five or ten years down the line whether people are going to be driving as much. It looks like they'll be driving a comparable amount, but there might be changes in different parts of the country. We don't know how often people are going to be flying. We don't know how often people are going to be using public transportation. And spending a bunch of money building new infrastructure that might end up just being wasted is a bad idea. I think first we need to figure out what the needs are going to be. But another problem is that when the federal government is involved, projects take longer to complete, projects become way more expensive to complete. And in a a lot of cases, not only is it bad for the federal government to be doing this work, but the

federal government also prevents the private sector and state governments from doing the work and financing the work themselves. And it all leads to this centralization of power and control and money in Washington, D.C. that is really unhealthy, both from a policy standpoint, because there's lots of inefficiency, but also from a governance standpoint, because when everything's controlled in Washington, it's more removed from the people on the ground from the voters. There's less transparency. There's less accountability. It's just a bad deal all around.

So how much do we usually spend a year on infrastructure? And then with this $1.1 trillion bill, what's the roll out of? of that as far as, you know, is that over a one-year period, a five-year period, how long until, you know, that money is distributed out? So the core spending that the federal government does is, and again, it depends on your definition, it's in the neighborhood of $60 billion a year. And this bill is going, and this is one of the other things that's remarkable. This isn't $1 trillion spread over 10 years.

The vast majority of this money will get spent. within five years. It's nearly doubling the amount of infrastructure spending when there simply is no case for saying that we need to double infrastructure spending. Our economy hasn't doubled, our population hasn't doubled and isn't going to double. It's spending that is driven primarily by lobbying groups that stand to benefit from the spending. So there's obviously major impacts to that. We're going to touch on that in just a moment. But first I want to talk a little bit, David, about the possibility of this bill passing

in the House. And in order to do that, we have to first talk about the $3.5 trillion reconciliation spending package. House Democrats are saying both the infrastructure bill and then this $3.5 trillion package must pass. What is in this other $3.5 trillion package? This $3.5 trillion dollar sometimes referenced as reconciliation, which means that it's going to go through a special set of budgetary rule that will allow it to pass with a slithful. majority vote in both chambers, which means that in theory they could pass it through the Senate without a single Republican signing on. And that means in turn that the bill could be much further

left than it would be if it needed to get bipartisan by it. And because of that, they're looking to shoehorn every progressive cause that they can think of into this bill. So they're talking about Big increases in social spending, massively expanding to welfare state, they are looking at rolling out all kinds of environmentalist programs, huge amounts of spending that they would try to use to prop up favorable industries and favorable businesses and try to implement rules that are going to punish businesses and industries that they don't like. and then they also have a $100 billion set aside for a program that would try to promote mass amnesty for illegal immigrants. Now, fortunately, that last thing might not be able to fit through the budget rules, but we can't guarantee that it gets struck down. It very well might go through. Well, I know House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she said that she's not. going to take up the $1.1 trillion bill unless the Senate also passes this $3.5 trillion

reconciliation package. So what do you think the chances are that the larger appropriations bill will pass the Senate? And do you think House Democrats will, you know, are going to budge? And if it doesn't pass, that they would go ahead and pass the $1 trillion bill. There are a lot of complications. So, for example, in the House, there are a lot of in the Senate, the full Democratic caucus in the Senate is supporting the infrastructure bill. There are a lot of members, very prominent members in the House caucus who are upset with the infrastructure bill that the Senate has put together. They might vote against it. And given how narrow the House majority is, that would increase the amount of Republican votes that they would need.

And they can't guarantee that they can get that. So that's, number one, they might not even pass the infrastructure bill in the House. Number two, there's already pushback among some moderate members in both the House and the Senate on the Democratic side against such an enormous tax and spend bill. It's important to understand the $3.5 trillion package, which is going to include spending and taxes, would be the largest piece of legislation. in the history of the world. And that's a tough pill to swallow. For instance, Senator Cinema of Arizona has already come out saying that she is not comfortable with that kind of growth of the federal government.

That's hard to swallow, the largest spending bill in the history of the world. Yeah. And again, it would be one thing if this was being done at a time where, there were big majorities. It was clear that this is what the American public wanted, but instead the American public has chosen over the last several cycles to have very narrow majorities, essentially divided control of power. There's no mandate for this kind of radical agenda. Wow. So the Congressional Budget Office says for just the $1.1.3 trillion, dollar infrastructure bill, they say, you know, just that bill alone, that's going to add significant

debt to our national debt. And, you know, on the left, we have those saying, well, actually, you know, it's going to, the bill will create opportunities for economic growth. It'll sort of balance out or cancel out that debt. So who's right here? What are the long-term impacts of just the lesser bill? So members of Congress, both parties unfortunately, have a habit of saying that legislation they like that's going to increase the debt will pay for itself. The problem is that the legislation needs to generate a 500% return on investment to get there because typically the federal government is taxing 20% or less of the economic outcome. output. And there is no way that you're getting a 500% return on investment for what's in the infrastructure bill. Again, spending on things like Amtrak and transit that people just don't use,

they want to spend money on broadband internet. Again, that's something that on the surface might sound like a great thing. But they're going to spend all this money on broadband internet to give access to a relatively small part of the population. But they also are implementing all kinds of social justice rhetoric within the broadband section that's going to turn this more into the public housing version of the internet rather than expanding the high-quality internet that people are thinking of. So in other words, we're seeing behind a lot of these things is really quite a bit of a leftist agenda. Absolutely.

For an infrastructure bill that should be focused on sort of the nuts and the bolts, what's practical, how are we going to get these things built? This infrastructure bill, they include the word equity more than 50 times. Equity being one of the leading left-wing concepts. It's something that would not have been mentioned in previous bills. They've inserted it here because they want to transform places like the Department of Transportation into a vehicle for social change. Wow. Very, very telling. And it sounds like they're not hiding that agenda at all, including language like that so often in the bill.

And another thing that just absolutely blows my mind is that. they have a provision that they believe the federal government should be subsidizing internet access for, quote, unquote, incarcerated individuals, which we might think of as prisoners. Wow. So really just, yeah, building it on. Well, I want to chat just a little bit more about the impacts to our economy here. Since the start of 2020, we've increased our national debt by $5.2 trillion. And with this infrastructure bill on the reconciliation package, it doesn't appear like the government has any plans at all on slowing down on that spending. So what does that mean for, you know, the single mom of two kids in Kansas or the small business owner in Texas, maybe a new college grad or the retired engineer in Florida,

how does this much government spending affect everyday Americans? Well, for one thing, every dollar that spent is going to be taxed, whether it's today or tomorrow. There is no such thing as a free lunch. And the left knows it, which is why they are expecting to have at least $1.5 trillion worth of tax increases, if not more, in the reconciliation. package. And they're going to try to focus those taxes on job creators. So they're looking at taxes on personal investment. They're looking at taxes on businesses. What the economy needs right now, because we still haven't gotten back to where we were before the pandemic, we still got work to do to get the economy back in shape. We need private sector investment. We need businesses to start.

We need businesses to invest and grow, and tax increases on that investment is going to kneecap the economic recovery. So that's first and foremost. The other concern I have is they are blowing an incredible amount of money through the economy with all of this new spending, and that is a driving force behind the inflation that we're seeing. some amount of federal spending, a small increase, for example, it's something that I would oppose as a fiscal conservative, but it wouldn't necessarily be dangerous. What the federal government has done by spending, by injecting trillions of dollars in the different COVID bills,

in the stimulus bills over the course of the last year, and then adding to that with two more multi-trillion dollars, spending packages over and above what they've already spent, that threatens to return us to the kind of inflation that we haven't seen in decades. So what are the solutions? One solution would be for members of Congress to hit the brakes a bit. They don't have to pass the Senate's infrastructure bill. They don't have to spend $3.5 trillion in the reconciliation package. In addition to that, it is vital for Congress to take responsibility for programs like Social Security and Medicare that are on the fast track to bankruptcy. And if those programs really do you hit the wall,

that's going to have big ramifications both for retired Americans, and for working Americans. David, any last thoughts before we let you go? We really appreciate your expertise on this. The last time that we saw Congress really wake up and take responsibility for how they use taxpayer dollars was a result of the Tea Party movement. And that wasn't driven by elites. It was driven by voters. It was driven by citizen activists who made their voice heard.

And it's important that that happened again because I really think that's the only way we can get Congress to do its job properly. David Ditch, a policy analyst and the Heritage Foundation Center for the federal budget. Sir, we thank you so much for your time and for our audience. If you want to read more about this topic, we encourage you. You can search for David's name, David Ditch, on the Daily Signal. You'll see his latest pieces on this topic. But we really so appreciate your time and you coming on to break this down for us, David. Thank you very much.

And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating at Apple Podcasts, and please ask others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage

Foundation. It is executive produced by Virginia Allen and Katrina Trinco, sound design, by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney and John Pop.